review essay: progress and possibilities in migration studies: the contributions of werner hacker...

8/12/2019 Review Essay: Progress and Possibilities in Migration Studies: The Contributions of Werner Hacker to the Study of

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Review Essay: Progress and Possibilities inMigration Studies: The Contributions ofWerner Hacker to the Study of Early GermanMigration to Pennsylvania

Aaron FoglemanUniversity of Michigan

Auswanderer aus dem Territorium der Reichstadt Ulm, vor allem imausgehenden 17. und im 18. Jahrhundert. (Ulm und Oberschwaben.ZeitschriftfarGeschichte und Kunst, vol. 42/43 (1978), pp. 161-257.)Auswanderungen aus Baden und dem Breisgau, Obere and mittlererechtseitige Oberrheinlandeim 18 Jahrhundertarchivalisch dokumentiert. (Stuttgart and Aalen: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1980. Pp. 743.)Kurpfailzische Auswanderer vom Unteren Neckar, Rechtrheinische Gebi-ete der Kurpfalz. (Stuttgart and Aalen: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1983. Pp.208.)Auswanderungen aus Rheinpfalz and Saarland im 18 Jahrhundert.(Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1987. Pp. 797.)

WVerner Hacker, the indefatigable former director of the West Germannational railway system, has recently made yet another major contribution to thestudy of eighteenth-century German migration. Although there is no guaranteethat this will be his last (in spite of his advanced years), it seems appropriate at thistime to review his accomplishments relevant to the German migration toPennsylvania and assess their potential and importance.Recently many new publications have appeared containing consolidationsof emigrant lists to America. Don Yoder edited a collection of lists fromZweibricken, Schaffhausen, Wirttemberg and Wertheim that had been pub-lished separately by the PennsylvaniaGerman Folklore Society Later he publisheda consolidation of 24 articles appearing in Pennsylvania Folklife from 1966 to1977. Also, Henry Z. Jones compiled lists of early German immigrants in NewYork, and Inge Auerbach, in the Hesse state archives, produced a list ofemigrants from that German state in the eighteenth century.'Further, Annette K. Burgert has published an impressive two-volume work,in which she used previously published emigrant lists, along with church books


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319in the Palatinate and Pennsylvania, to create profiles of over one thousandemigrants, including their place of origin, date of emigration and place ofsettlement in Pennsylvania. Throughout the 1980s P. William Filby has edited amassive, multi-volume index of all American immigrants before 1900, which isupdated annually, and Michael Tepper has published several consolidated lists ofpre-1900 immigrants. Carl Boyer produced a three-volume collection of ship listsfor the Atlantic colony-states. 2These new additions, along with older lists compiled by Rupp, Faust,Strassburger and Hinke, Knittle and others, are making it more feasible than everto understand the German immigrant experience in early Pennsylvania, fromplace of origin to eventual settlement.In the four works listed above, Hacker makes valuable contributions to thisgrowing literature.' These volumes contain lists of over three thousand heads offamilies who emigrated to America, primarily Pennsylvania, in the eighteenthcentury. They are the result of exhaustive, decades long research in the local andstate archives of Ulm, Baden and the Palatinate-areas from which majoremigrations to America took place. Essentially, Hacker has given historians acomprehensive consolidation of emigrations from these areas-that is officialemigrations. The opportunities his lists provide for historians of Pennsylvania,America and Germany are enormous.

From the first area, the imperial city Ulm and its territories (today in easternWiirttemberg), Hacker found 813 heads of family emigrating, 128 of whom (16percent) went to America. The second area, Baden and the Breisgau, had some12,000 emigrant heads of family, 686 (6 percent) of whose destination wasAmerica. This seemingly low figure is somewhat misleading. This area incorpo-rated many political entities, including Baden-Durlach, which itself was physi-cally separated by other states into three parts. The northern part, aroundKarlsruhe, had 2406 total emigrations of which 629 (26 percent) went to America.The lower Neckar area of the Palatinate (Kurpfalz) had 2231 emigrations, 544 toAmerica (24 percent). And finally, the western Palatinate and Saarland had 16,834emigrations, 1892 (11 percent) to America.4

Hacker has probably found almost all emigrants recorded in the governmen-tal documents. Before leaving, potential emigrants in virtually all German stateswere required to report their intentions to the authorities and pay very large fees.Hacker's work is based primarily on painstaking, decades long scrutiny of thesedocuments in various archives of southwest Germany. The value of his work isthat it is essentially a comprehensive study of this valuable source over fairly largegeographic areas and for a long period of time (the eighteenth century). Otherpublished lists tend to cover smaller time periods using varieties of sources, butnot comprehensively. Hacker makes no claim to have found all emigrants fromthese areas, however. Illegal, or unofficial emigration (the Schwarzauswanderung)

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320is as big a problem for twentieth-century historians as it was for eighteenth-century German authorities trying to prevent it, and whoever consults Hacker'swork should keep this in mind. Annette Burgert (Eighteenth Century Emigrants)has found a way to deal with the Schwarzauswanderung by searching churchbooks for names that disappear from their respective villages in the Palatinateand then appear in American immigration records. She found 624 emigrant headsof household in the northern Kraichgau (an area Hacker covered in KurpfdlzischeAuswanderer), while Hacker lists only 544 in his entire volume. The difference isattributable to the Schwarzauswanderung. Hacker is dealing with a particulartype of emigrant-the type that played by the rules. In this respect his work isunsurpassed, comprehensive and definitive.

The organization of all four volumes is roughly the same. Hacker begins bygiving a general description of the geography of the areas and goes on to discusspolitical conditions and the administrative requirements for emigration. Hisdetailed explanations of the various governmental offices involved, their dutiesand relative success in collecting manumission and emigration fees reveal a greatdeal about the state in eighteenth-century southwest Germany. Motivated bymercantilist views of controlling and manipulating their populations (the peopleare the wealth of a nation-the more a nation has, the stronger it will be, etc.),' allthe governments resisted emigration by charging enormous fees for manumis-sion from serfdom, permission to emigrate, and export of possessions. They alsoharassed emigrants by forbidding them to return (threatening confiscation oftheir goods if they did) and passing edicts outlawing emigration. The contrastbetween the heavy tax burden in Germany and the light one in America cannotbe overemphasized. Indeed, one wonders if an increasing contact with the state(and possibly a resentment thereof) might not have been in the background ofmany German immigrants in Pennsylvania and other colonies. On the otherhand, no German state in the three-hundred year history of emigration toAmerica was successful in halting emigration for very long.

Hacker also discusses the causes of emigration, and it is here that there areproblems. As do many historians of eighteenth-century German emigration,Hacker tends to give laundry lists of causes, without explaining how they mighthave worked together in the particular situation of each territory. In Baden andthe Breisgau, for example, increasing scarcity of land resources, almost continualwarfare before 1748, crop damage resulting from cold weather, floods andstorms, livestock diseases, as well as escaping the military draft and elopementare all mentioned as causes of the emigration (pp. 31-42). Yet nowhere doesHacker analyze these developments in conjunction with detectable emigration(from his lists) in order to discover what the dynamic behind emigration mighthave been. Unseasonably cold weather, storms and floods can mean disaster forany agrarian society, but why did they cause emigration only from certain areas?

Pennsylvania History


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321Also, Hacker's insistence that nearly continual warfare was a major cause ofemigration from southwest Germany is very misleading. After 1714 the worstburdens of war were shifted to other areas of Europe and it is well after 1714 thatmost emigration occurs. One should not view German immigrants in Pennsylva-nia as a people who had fled a land of death and destruction, searching for peacein the New World. While it is true that the flow of immigration into Philadelphiais higher between mid-eighteenth century wars (see p. 211), this is because thewars interrupted the growing immigrant shipping industry, not because peoplewere escaping war.Also, while Hacker emphasizes the catastrophic effects of weather condi-tions on the harvest in 1708/09 and 1770/71 (and many other years) contributingto high emigration in those years, he does not consider that these conditionswere prevalent throughout Europe. Yet people emigrated only from southwestGermany. In fact, even in Baden there were significant variations: Virtually noone left middle or southern Baden in 1709, while significant numbers may haveleft the northern areas (though Hacker's lists do not even bear this out).Hacker's later works correct this problem to some degree. In KurpfhlzischeAuswanderer he lists permanent and temporary causes (pp. 47-57). Amongpermanent motives are religion (which played no role in Baden), overpopulation,the military draft, serfdom and the burden of war requisitions. Since the lateseventeenth century Protestants and especially Anabaptists had been underpressure from the Catholic regime.6 Though he recognizes the importance ofoverpopulation and accompanying scarcity of land, Hacker only devotes threelines to this crucial aspect of emigration. Concerning the draft and warrequisitions, he once again simply lists all the wars fought in central Europeduring the eighteenth century and assumes their relationship to the emigration.Finally, while serfdom itself did not cause emigration it served as a constantreminder to potential emigrants of their status and a contrast to the possibilitieselsewhere. About two thirds of the people in this area were serfs.

Short-range (temporary) causes of emigration from the lower Neckar regionof the Palatinate included crop damage from severe weather, unofficial recruit-ment (e.g. letters from friends and relatives), as well as official recruitment (theactivities of agents working for speculators and shipping interests) from thedestination lands, personal debts and the lack of credit and problems withcoinage. While his first two reasons are sound, if not well-supported, the last twoare neither linked adequately to emigration, nor explained well in their own right.

In his last work, Rheinpfalz und Saarland,Hacker finally establishes a morecomplete relationship among causes of emigration (pp. 89-98). Overpopulationand land scarcity are the most important underlying, continuing problemsbehind emigration. The population level of 1618 (before the long period ofdestructive wars) is regained about 1740 and parcelling of land in areas practicing



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322partible inheritance became more and more acute thereafter as the populationcontinued to grow. Wars, bad weather and religious persecution played theirusual roles (though once again, Hacker does not effectively establish clearrelationships between these factors). Recruitment (Werbung from the destina-tion lands served as the last factor which touched off emigration.In addition to discussing politics, administration and the causes of emigra-tion, Hacker also presents rough sketches of the course of emigration in eachterritory. Although it is not in any way based on a quantitative analysis of his lists,these sketches are useful in that they give the reader some sense of when largernumbers of people were leaving and how conditions varied, as well as to whattheir destinations were. Major emigrations to America from the territories ofUlm occurred from 1740 to 1753 and 1765 to 1768.7 He lists occupations of someof these emigrants in the years 1751 and 1752: 37 percent were weavers, 22 percentfarmers, 6.5 percent tailors and 4 percent clockmakers (pp. 178-189). Mostemigrants from southwest Germany in the eighteenth century actually went notto America but to eastern Europe (especially to Hungary, Transylvania, theBanat, Galicia, Russia and Prussia). Thus Pennsylvania Germans, numerous asthey were in that colony, represented only a small minority of the totalemigration, even in the Palatinate and northern Baden, where their numbers werehighest. Hacker speculates that this was because transportation to east Europewas easier (Baden und Breisqau,p. 116). However, many Swiss went to Americaand for them the journey was longer than for those in northern Baden who wenteast. Also, in 1816 and 1817 there was a major emigration from around Freiburg(in southern Baden) to America under travel conditions prevalent in theeighteenth century.8

Hacker's discussion of the nuts and bolts of the emigration process isthorough and revealing. Almost all emigrants were from rural areas, being eitherfarmers, artisans or laborers, and many if not most were serfs. (Serfdom wasabolished in 1783 in Baden and 1803 in the Palatinate, though many of the oldduties, especially regarding emigration, remained.) In order to emigrate serfs hadfirst to apply for manumission and pay a large fee upon receiving it. Manumis-sion was granted or denied by the grace of none other than the territorial ruler,often personally, though there was an extensive bureaucracy which handled mostsuch affairs.

The fees for manumission varied, but all were high. The authorities in Ulmextracted 2 to 4 percent of the property of men and 16 percent from women, aswell as another 8 fl from each person, including children. Baden-Durlach and thePalatinate each received 10 percent from both men and women and the Duchy ofZweibracken (see Rheinpfalz und Saarland) 5 percent from men and 7 percentfrom women. Once manumitted potential emigrants still had to pay large fees foremigrating and removing goods from their territory. In general, these equalled


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323well over 10 percent of their remaining goods. Altogether families with twochildren were required to pay roughly the following amounts by territory9 :

Serfs FreeUlm 20 + 33fl 10 + 33f6Palatinate 20 10Zweibriicken 1496 + 26 6 + 2flBaden-Durlach 22 + 33fl (ca.) 12 + 7fl (ca.)

These figures suggest that the emigrants were anything but poor: Emigra-tion was an expensive proposition. Families essentially gambled their entirelivelihood on succeeding in this enterprise. Many who had some wealth couldspend all of it paying the above fees, the costs of making their way down theRhine River and waiting in Rotterdam for a ship sailing to Philadelphia, followedby overseas passage and establishment in America. Indeed a small fortune couldbe spent just trying to reach Rotterdam. Thereafter many emigrants made theirway across the ocean as indentured servants or redemptioners. One should notview those who were bound out for service in Pennsylvania as the poor ofGermany. There were exceptions and ways to get around paying almost all costsof emigration (and the authorities often tried to promote them to get rid of theirindigent population); even so, the best established patterns were expensive andmost emigrants did not attempt the enterprise without at least some means ofpaying.

The text is actually only a small portion of each of Hacker's volumes. Hismajor contributions comprise the published documents. With the exception ofthe first work on the territories of Ulm, the actual emigrants lists are preceded bylarge collections of photocopies of documents relative to the emigration. Theseinclude government documents permitting first manumission from serfdom andthen emigration, fliers by recruiting agents describing their terms for providingpassage to Philadelphia, government proclamations trying to restrict emigration,and letters. These documents are important in that they show the variety ofexperience behind Pennsylvania German immigrants. Gottlieb Mittelberger isoften quoted as saying there were some thirty-six customs stops where dues werecollected during his trip from Vaihingen-on-the-Enz in Wirttemberg to Rotter-dam (thereafter to Philadelphia) in 1750.10 Yet a journey from Germersheim inthe Palatinate to Rotterdam in 1752 required no payment of customs. Passagewas 8 fl 30x for an adult and half that for children under nine years. (Infants werefree.) Two adults were allowed to carry one large trunk and four adults slept in aspace six feet by six feet.' With Hacker's documents historians can quickly get apicture of some of the details of emigration like these for large numbers of

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324emigrants from various territories, without having to rely on a few, well-knownbut not necessarily typical experiences like Mittelberger's.

The actual lists, of course, make up the bulk of each volume. Names arelisted alphabetically (an advantage for genealogists and a disadvantage in someways for historians). Each entry is numbered for reference and the following datais included: age, occupation, place of residence (by parish), marital status,spouse's name, number of children (sometimes their names), value of property,manumission fee, emigration and other fees, call number indicating location inthe archives, destination and day, month and year of the request to emigrate.Unfortunately, not every entry contains all this information. However, almost alldo contain place of residence, destination, the date of the request and some otherinformation. Also, indexes of parishes exist for all volumes except RheinpfalzandSaarland a surprising and crucial omission) and for the Ulm territories thereis an index of destinations. With these indexes one can readily calculate thenumber of emigrations by parish. Kurpfiulzische Auswanderer and Rheinpfalz andSaarland also have historical maps showing the location of each parish, theabsence of which for Baden und Breisqau presents a major handicap.Two examples illustrate how Hacker's lists and the parish indexes can beused. Adam Ibringer, reference number 888 in Kurpfilzische Auswanderer,applied to the authorities to emigrate to America ( ins Neue Land ) on May 3,1752. He had six children and they lived in Schriesheim, today in the county ofHeidelberg. (The historical map on the inside cover reveals that Schriesheim isjust north of the city Heidelberg.) In addition to Adam Ibringer, 64 other familiesor individuals emigrated from Schriesheim. Since Adam only had to pay a 10percent export tax, he probably was not a serf. Hacker found all this informationin the State Archives of Baden (Generallandesarchiv) n Karlsruhe under the callnumber 61/6198: 441, 483, which any researcher could easily find in person, orreceive in the form of a photocopy by mail.

Johann Schilling (Number 1756) came from Reichertshausen, then a part ofthe Sinsheim district and now in the county of Heidelberg as well. The mapshows Reichertshausen lying east of the city of Heidelberg and north ofSinsheim. Seven individuals or families left Reichertshausen in the eighteenthcentury. Johann applied to go to America with his wife and children on May 7,1751 and was charged an abnormally high amount of 15 percent for manumission(which means he was a serf) and 13 percent for exporting his goods. His callnumber in the Generallandesarchiv GLA) is 61/6197: 428, 474; 135/96 Nr 266.Also, Hacker managed to find him on the Ship Phoenix, which arrived inPhiladelphia on September 25, 1751, and a citation isgiven for Strassburger andHinke's Pennsylvania German Pioneers.

In addition to giving fascinating biographic information for individualemigrants, Hacker's data presents enormous possibilities for analysis of eighteenth-



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325century German immigrants in Pennsylvania and elsewhere.' 4 Emigration toAmerica by year can be calculated and a combined graph from these four areasconstructed:

1

Graph 1: Emigration Cases (IndividualsandFamilies) from Hacker's FourRegions to America in the 18th Century

The graph shows that peak emigration occurred from the late 1730s to theearly 1750s. After being interrupted by the French and Indian War, emigrationresumed in the 1760s but at lower levels. With some exceptions, this graphcorresponds roughly with a graph of Germans arriving in Philadelphia from 1727to 1775.15 Immigration of all Germans into Pennsylvania increased significantly inthe 1730s but the peaks reached in the late 1740s and early 1750s were muchhigher than those in Hacker's lists. Also, while 1752 was the largest year ofemigration from the four regions discussed here, it was in 1749 that the mostGermans arrived in Philadelphia. These differences are no doubt attributable tothe Schwarzauswanderung, which must have increased at a greater rate than theofficial emigration during peak periods.

Emigration to America as opposed to other destinations can be comparedbetween the four regions as well.The following table makes it immediately clear that even in the areas fromwhich many Pennsylvania Germans came, they were only a minority of the total.

The western Palatinate and Saarland, from where so many Palatines came, hadthe lowest percentage of emigrants to America.


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Table 1Emigration to America as a Percentage of Total Emigration from Hacker s FourRegions in the 18th Century

Emigrants to AmericaEmigrantRegion Heads of Family Numbers PercentUlm 813 128 16Northern Baden-Durlach16 2,406 629 26Lower Neckar (Palatinate) 2,231 544 24Western Palatinate and Saarland 16,834 1,892 11Total 22,284 3,193 14

The distribution of emigrants to America by decade and region can also becalculated:

Table 2Distribution of Decennial Emigration to America by Region in the

Eighteenth CenturyWestern

Baden/ Lower PalatinateDecade Ulm Breisqau Neckar Saarland Total1700-09 5 0 6 5 01710-19 3 1 5 0 8 01720-29 1 0M 54 10 15 1 70 21730-39 161 23 87 16 326 17 574 181740-49 7 5% 152 22 102 19 671 36 932 291750-59 101 79 260 38 203 37 425 22 989 311760-69 12 9 59 9 56 10 244 13 371 111770-79 2 2 36 5 10 2 88 5 136 41780-89 4 3 12 2 12 2 78 4 106 31790-99 5 1 5 1 35 2 45 1

? 2 2 12 2 14 1Total 128 100% 686 100% 544 100% 1892 100% 3250 100%

Here one can see how much eighteenth-century emigration was concen-trated in the middle decades of the century. From 1730 to 1769 eighty-ninepercent of all emigrants left these regions. Only in the lower Neckar, where tenpercent of its distribution was in the 1720s was there significant emigrationbefore 1730. Furthermore, all regions reached their peak period of emigration inthe 1750s, with the exception of the western Palatinate and Saarland, wherethirty-six percent left in the 1740s.' 7 The fact that emigration in the 1740s and1750s was often held back by naval warfare indicates how truly massive it was inthose years when emigrant-carrying ships could make the crossing. Again, thiscorresponds to the largest immigrations through Philadelphia in the 1740s and1750s.


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327These three examples illustrate in only a small way the potential for analysis

of Hacker's lists. With all the information for each emigrant in a database,historians could rigorously analyze the geography and local conditions ofemigration, as well as class, age, marital patterns and many other importantaspects of social history. Furthermore, these lists constitute biographies of manyearly Pennsylvania inhabitants. Especially when coupled with other publishedimmigrant lists, historians could eventually establish the nature of communityand kinship networks-to what degree they were reestablished in Pennsylvania,how long it took, and what if any upward mobility or changes in class structuremight have been involved in the migration experience.With Hacker's contributions and those of others mentioned earlier, we areapproaching a better understanding of the entire process of emigration fromGerman origins to final place of settlement in Pennsylvania and beyond.Furthermore, these sources are well-documented (especially Hacker's) and sincethey contain thousands and thousands of immigrants, we no longer have to relyon the often sketchy and possibly atypical experiences of, say Gottlieb Mittel-berger or Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. Germans were the largest ethnic group incolonial Pennsylvania and an adequate social history of the group as a whole hasyet to be written. Their European background and the experience of emigrationare crucial to understanding their history in Pennsylvania. Knowing who came,when, from what town or village, age, occupation, marital status and wealth willbe important in gaining a better understanding of their experience in the NewWorld.

Hacker's work constitutes a giant step toward achieving these goals. As atextual, historical analysis of emigration from these four regions of southwestGermany, his work is lacking. But his ability to find vast quantities of importantarchival material, organize, document and publish it are unsurpassed and make agreat contribution to understanding the background and history of the Pennsyl-vania German immigrant.

Notes1. Don Yoder (ed.), PennsylvaniaGerman Immi- City, California: Self publication, 1985); Ingegrants, 1709-1786. Lists Consolidated from the Auerbach (ed.), Auswanderung aus Hessen-HanauYearbooks of the Pennsylvania German Society im 18. jahrhundert. Vol. 1 in the series,(Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, Veroffentlichungen der Archivschule Marburg-1980); Don Yoder (ed.), Rhineland Immigrants.. Institut ir Archivwissenschaft, n. 12. Marburg,Lists of German Settlers in Colonial America 1987.(Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2. Annette K. Burgert, EighteenthCentury Em -1985), Henry Z. Jones, The PalatineFamilies in igrants rom German-SpeakingLands to NorthNew York. A Study of the German Immigrants who America. Vol. I: The Northern Kraichqau. Vol.Arrived in ColonialNew York in 1710 (Universal 16 in the series Publicationsof the Pennsylvania


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328German Society (Breinigsville, Pa., 1983). AndVol. II: The Western Palatinate. Vol. 19 inPublications. Birdsboro, Pa., 1985; P. WilliamFilby and Mary K. Meyer (eds.), PassengerandImmigration Lists Index (Detroit: Gale Re-search Co., 1981-1988ff); Michael Tepper (ed.),New World Immigrants. A ConsolidationofShipPassenger Lists andAssociated Data rom Peri-odical Literature. 2 vols., Immigrants to theMiddleColonies:A Consolidationof Ship Passen-ger Lists and Associated Data from the NewYork GenealogicalandBiographicalRecord, andEmigrants o Pennsylvania, 1641-1819: A Con-solidationofShip PassengerLists from the Penn-sylvania Magazine of History and Biography(Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Com-pany, 1979); Carl Boyer (ed.), Ship PassengerLists, 3 vols., Newhall, CA: Boyer Publications,1977-80. For an exhaustive bibliography ofpublished pre-1900 immigrant lists see P.William Filby, Passengerand ImmigrationListsBibliography, 1538-1900(2nd ed.; Detroit: GaleResearch Co., 1988).3. Hacker has published num erous other workscontaining large numbers of eighteenth-cen-tury emigrants from southwest Germany. How-ever, almost all of these emigrants went to eastEurope. The four works discussed here arethose which contain large numbers of emi-grants to America (the large majority of whomwent to Pennsylvania), though most even inthese volumes went to east Europe as well, aswill be shown later. A translated extract ofanother of Hacker's works (Ausswanderungenaus dem friiheren Hochstift Speyer nach Shdo-steuropa und ihersee im XVIII. Jahrhundert,vol. 28 in Schriften zur Wanderungsgeschichteder Pfilzer, Kaiserslautern: Heimatstelle Pfalz,1969) is available which lists those who emi-grated to the British colonies, but there wereonly twenty-two such cases. (See Don Yoder,trans., American Emigrants from the Territo-ries of the Bishopric of Speyer, PennsylvaniaFolklife, 21:3 (Summer 1972): 43-45.)4. All of these compilations are my own. Oneof the problems with Hacker's work, as will bediscussed later, is that he in no way attemptsany quantitative analysis of his own lists, some-

thing typical of researchers with primarily gene-alogical concerns.5. This was a problem English, Scottish andIrish emigrants to America in the eighteenthcentury had to deal with as well.6. The validity of religious persecution as caus-ing emigration from the Palatinate was ques-tioned years ago by Otto F. Raum, who foundthat a third of the emigrants in the years after1709 were Catholic, while they made up lessthan a third of the population. (See DieHintergriinde der Pfilzer Auswanderung imJahre 1709. Deutsches Archiv ir Landes- undVolksforschung, 3 [1939], 551-567.)7. My tabulations of his lists indicate thatemigration to America from these regions wasonly significant from 1749 to 1752.8. See Mac Walker, Germany and the Emigra-tion, 1816-1885 (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1964), pp. 1-33. The RhineRiver was not navigable beyond Karlsruhe (innorthern Baden) by large boats and ships untilafter the Tulla correction, which was begun in1817. See Eugen Rheinhard, Die Veranderun-gen der Kulturlandschaft durch die Rheinkor-rektion seit 1817, HistorischerAtlas von Baden-WVrttemberg. Vol. 18/19, part 4 (1974).9. It is difficult to estimate typical wages andassets for emigrants because they varied overtime and from territory to territory. An averagefamily holding some land and a dwelling mayhave had about 300 fl (roughly 120 sterling)after selling everything and before paying theirfees and taxes, though often families emi-grated without giving up their claims, return-ing later to handle their affairs or instructingfriends and relatives who remained behind todo so.10. Gottlieb Mittelberger,Journey o Pennsylva-nia, ed. and trans. by Oscar Handlin and JohnClive (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1960), p. 11 .11. Rheinpfalz und Saarland,pp. 178-179.12. Hacker's lists are very accessible to thosewho cannot read German. The data for eachentry consists primarily of numbers, names andabbreviations. At the beginning of each workare keys for all the abbreviations, most of



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329which can be readily understood. The otherscan be easily translated with a dictionary.13. Ralph B. Strassburger and WilliamJ. Hinke(eds.), Pennsylvania German Pioneers. A Publi-cation of Arrivals in the Port of Philadelphiafrom 1727-1808 (3 vols. Norristown, Pa: Penn-sylvania German Society, 1934).14. Once again I must emphasize that Hackerdid not attempt to analyze his lists. His intro-ductory material is based on secondary litera-ture and the more qualitative material he foundwhile searching the archives. The value in hiswork is that he has made it possible for histori-ans to analyze large numbers of emigrants by

consulting his books, rather than spendingdecades in southwest German archives to getthe same material.15. See Strassburger and Hinke, PennsylvaniaGermanPioneers, vol. 1, pp. 768-776.16. Note that only this region of Hacker'sentire volume, Baden and Breisqau is consid-ered in this table. The 629 emigrations fromthe northern Baden-Durlach equal ninety-twopercent of the total.17. Actually, the largest waves of emigrationbegan in the late 1740s for the four regionstogether, as Graph 1 shows.


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